Margot James makes sure Stourbridge views inform Conservative crime policy

At a meeting organised by Conservative Parliamentary Candidate, Margot James, last week in Lye, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling consulted local police, probation officers, magistrates, Dudley Council staff and representatives of Stourbridge schools on proposals to deal with crime and anti-social behaviour.

The main ‘take home messages’ local representatives of the criminal justice system gave Chris Grayling were as follows:

• Children can be identified as potential trouble makers from a young age. There should be a better information flow between police, probation and schools so that these children can be targeted for special help.
• There needs to be somewhere to monitor and support children excluded from schools. The standard of pupil referral units is very variable and many excluded children end up on the streets and lack supervision.
• Youth engagement is very important to tackling the ‘bored’ element that drift in to anti social behaviour. Police present questioned why the skate park in Stourbridge for example was still dormant.
• The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is out of synch with the rest of the Criminal Justice System. They focus on serious crime and it is very difficult to get them engaged on the persistent anti social behaviour which blights many more people’s lives. A real problem is the fact that the Police have lost so many of their powers to bring charges to the CPS.
• The application of fixed penalty notices (FPNs) are making matters worse. First the ‘parking ticket’ style approach belittles anti-social behaviour in the eyes of perpetrators (and victims) second they are hardly ever paid. Hence they contribute to the feeling among people engaged in anti-social behaviour that they can continue their way of life unchecked. Inevitably they will continue on to more serious crime over time.
• Criminals and victims had lost respect for the courts; the non payment of fines, the downgrading of charges, the loss of power over licensing to Local Authorities had all contributed to this loss of respect.
• Alcohol is a major factor contributing to crime and anti-social behaviour. Police report that locally as much as 50% of incidents involve perpetrators whose behaviour is fuelled by drink.
• 80% of children excluded from school and in touch with the probation service can barely read or write. There is a need for better mentoring for young parents is required.
• Care must be taken not to label people of Asian descent as extremists if they are behaving in a criminal or anti-social way. We need to work across communities to prevent extremism taking hold, especially over young people, but it is important not to make negative assumptions that lead people to be categorised as extremists when they are more likely to be displaying similar criminal behaviour to other groups. Categorising them as extremists can be very counter-productive.

 
Chris Grayling responded to the issues raised by unveiling some emerging Conservative Policies for comment from the group. Conservative ideas include the following:

• Early intervention is key to preventing crime later on in a child’s life. Support is important but so is swift punishment. If young people keep getting off with a caution or less they soon form the view that there are no consequences for anti-social behaviour.
• The Conservatives are NOT in favour of giving teenagers criminal records, save for the most serious forms of crime and anti-social behaviour, but swift sanctions such as curfews and the confiscation of personal property is a deterrent to the average young person who gets involved in anti-social behaviour.
• A proposal to take the hundred most challenged parts of the country and fund youth workers to create a flagship youth engagement centre in each area. For approximately £60,000 a centre could be established which extends existing services to reach more young people.
• A review of charging policy. Although there were good reasons for giving the CPS more influence over what charges should be brought the pendulum has swung far too far in favour of the CPS and the Conservatives plan to restore significant influence over charging to the police. This proposal was welcomed by both the police and magistrate present.

Margot James welcomed the input from the group and the recommendations from Chris Grayling. “When the police do get on top of anti-social behaviour by arresting the ringleaders and working with youth offending teams to engage with the ‘hangers on’ a real difference can be made, as we saw a few months ago in Wollaston, but all too often people are let off or moved on and this just reinforces their view that they can behave as they like without fear of consequences, this is endemic throughout the entire system, with the CPS forcing the police to drop charges, or downgrading the seriousness of the charges to get a quick conviction right through to Labour’s early release scheme which automatically lets prisoners free just half way through their sentence”. People know who has the upper hand in all this and it is certainly not the law abiding public and those paid to protect them.

Photo: Margot James with Chris Grayling, Stourbridge Police Officers and local magistrate Tony Billingham.